Salient » Matt Currillhttp://salient.org.nz
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 21:43:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.18Niue’s Waters a Sanctuary for Pacific fishhttp://salient.org.nz/2017/10/niues-waters-a-sanctuary-for-pacific-fish/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/10/niues-waters-a-sanctuary-for-pacific-fish/#commentsSun, 15 Oct 2017 20:00:32 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48917Niue announced a new marine sanctuary that will protect 126,909 square kilometres of its oceans on October 6, seeking to safeguard the future of the nation’s unique natural environment.

The sanctuary will cover 40% of Niue’s Exclusive Economic Zone, encompassing the main island, submerged atolls, and surrounding reefs — including the Beveridge Reef, habitat to a large population of the threatened grey reef shark.

Once established, it will be the 28th largest marine protected area in the world.

The reserve comes as part of a Niue Ocean Wide (NOW) project to safeguard the nation’s natural resources. NOW director, Brendon Pasisi, told National Geographicit was “no small feat for a small, developing island-state to make such a tremendous and tangible contribution to ocean conservation.”

Niue’s Premier Toke Talagi said the move “is an investment in the stability and certainty of our children’s future. We simply cannot be the generation of leaders who have taken more than they have given to this planet and left behind a debt our children cannot pay.”

Niue’s announcement arrives amid global concern about ocean ecosystems. Overfishing has devastated open-ocean fish populations, and a changing climate is resulting in warmer, more acidic waters, which are harmful to coral reefs.

It also concurs with a global movement towards ocean preservation. Chile recently announced two new marine reserves, which together would equate to an area the size of France, while Mexico has announced the protection of an area incorporating the UNESCO world heritage listed Revillagigedo Islands — the largest marine reserve of its kind in North America.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/10/niues-waters-a-sanctuary-for-pacific-fish/feed/0Police Responsible for a Gross Breach of Privacyhttp://salient.org.nz/2017/10/police-responsible-for-a-gross-breach-of-privacy/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/10/police-responsible-for-a-gross-breach-of-privacy/#commentsSun, 08 Oct 2017 20:00:48 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48772New Zealand police have been tapping the phones of a prison abolitionist group in what its members say is a gross breach of privacy.

Three members of People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA) discovered through court documents that their communications had been intercepted by the police for an undisclosed period of time.

Permission to monitor communications was granted on November 22, 2016, after an incident between PAPA and the Department of Corrections. The three members occupied a Corrections office, chaining themselves to a desk in protest of a transgender prisoner being kept in solitary confinement. The protesters faced charges of trespassing, but were all discharged without conviction on September 28.

The police statement to the court said that any call made or received by the monitored lines was automatically recorded and stored, available to any direct investigative staff. PAPA members do not how long the phone lines were monitored, or how the information has been used.

PAPA spokesperson Emilie Rākete told VICEthat the tap was a “blatant breach to the right of privacy.” She argued that those with beliefs “inconvenient” to the government are as entitled to that right as everyone else, raising questions about the legitimacy of a police investigation into groups like PAPA.

She stated, in a press release, “It demonstrates the lengths to which the police are willing to go to undermine our organisation. This is a politically motivated attack by the New Zealand Police.”

The Search and Surveillance Act, passed in 2012, allows agencies to surveil or search a person if there are reasonable grounds to believe they had committed, or would commit, an offence. At the time the Act was passed, then Police Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess did not believe it to be a significant expansion of police powers.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/10/police-responsible-for-a-gross-breach-of-privacy/feed/0A rare sighting of good news: Snow leopards no longer endangeredhttp://salient.org.nz/2017/09/a-rare-sighting-of-good-news-snow-leopards-no-longer-endangered/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/a-rare-sighting-of-good-news-snow-leopards-no-longer-endangered/#commentsSun, 24 Sep 2017 20:00:38 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48551Snow leopards are no longer considered an endangered species, having been reclassified for the first time in 45 years. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has moved the species into the less urgent “vulnerable” category after a three year assessment period by five international experts.

IUCN estimate the global snow leopard population to number more than 2,500 but fewer than 10,000, with a projected decline of 10% over three generations. It noted that population figures are partly speculative due to the difficulty of obtaining hard data on the secretive species in their remote habitat of the Himalayas.

Significant conservation measures have been implemented to mitigate threats posed to the wild population. New protected areas have been established in snow leopard range, and local initiatives to control conflict over livestock losses are helping to protect the cats from retaliatory killings.

Tom McCarthy, executive director of wild cat conservation group Panthera, said that the reclassification did not mean that snow leopards are now “safe.” The species is still likely declining — “just not at the rate previously thought.”

Snow leopards remain at threat from poaching for fur and bones, used in traditional medicine, and a loss of prey and habitat from overgrazing and meteorological events. Climate change threatens two-thirds of the snow leopard’s habitat.

Communications Manager for the Snow Leopard Trust, Matthias Fietcher, warned that the term endangered “means something very different to the general public than it does to the IUCN and conservation experts.” He told Salientthat although the new listing says the numbers are higher than previously thought, “it does not assume things have really improved” since the previous assessment.

606 shoes were laid out on Parliament’s lawn on September 10, representing the number of New Zealanders lost to suicide in 2016. The shoes had travelled from Cape Reinga and Bluff to be presented on International Suicide Prevention Day as part of the Shoe Project, an awareness campaign organised by Yes We Care.

New Zealand has the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world, five times that of Britain and twice that of Australia. The number of deaths has risen for the past three years in a row, with 606 in 2016 (year ending June) and 579 in 2015.

Yes We Care is an alliance of community groups, patients, and health workers aiming to make health and mental health funding a key election issue. The Shoe Project campaign started on August 26 with a collection of 579 shoes, increasing by 27 when new statistics were released. Of the total, 130 pairs belonged to Māori and 475 belonged to men.

The campaign stopped in seven cities over fifteen days. At each event a local affected by suicide told a personal story while holding a pair of loved one’s shoes. Spokesperson Simon Oosterman, speaking of the display, told NZ Herald that “when you see it it really hits you how many people we’re missing. It can be distressing for people but we need to talk about it.”

Attendees were invited to sign an open letter in support of Yes We Care’s election pledges. Yes We Care are calling for political parties to set a suicide reduction target, restore $2.3 billion in health funding, and run an independent inquiry into the nation’s mental health crisis.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/yes-we-care/feed/0Gordon Wilson Flats Saved From the Wrecking Ballhttp://salient.org.nz/2017/08/gordon-wilson-flats-saved-from-the-wrecking-ball/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/gordon-wilson-flats-saved-from-the-wrecking-ball/#commentsSun, 20 Aug 2017 21:00:00 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48160The Gordon Wilson flats have been saved from demolition after the Environment Court upheld an appeal from the Architectural Centre which sought to retain the building’s heritage status.

VUW purchased the flats from Housing New Zealand in 2014, seeking to have it rezoned as part of VUW to allow for its demolition. Wellington City Council (WCC) removed the building’s heritage status in its District Plan last year.

The building has remained abandoned since 2012, when 131 tenants, housed there through Housing New Zealand, were evacuated due to safety concerns. An engineer’s report revealed the building’s concrete facade was at risk of collapsing in an earthquake or strong wind.

VUW Director of Property Services, Stephen Costley, told Salientthat the property was purchased with a view of demolishing the building. This would be to “support [VUW’s] strategic goal of becoming more connected to the city.” A “safe and attractive” walkway was proposed, connecting the Kelburn campus to Ghuznee Street and the city centre.

VUW sought demolition on the basis that there “was no viable use for the building.” Costley told Salientthat the building was unable to provide satisfactory accommodation or educational facilities.

The Architectural Centre appealed WCC’s delisting of the building in May 2017, arguing that despite the building’s decrepit condition, there had been no exploration of “reasonable alternatives to demolition,” or recognition of the “adverse heritage effects” of any modifications.

The heritage status of the building was upheld on a number of grounds. Built in 1959, the flats are a rare example of high-rise social housing built under a National government. The flats are also an exemplar of Modernist post-war architecture, being one of two such buildings in the country.

“While acknowledging the present condition of the building to be poor, there is nothing that cannot be repaired and reinstated, leaving a building that would be fit for purpose as housing for students, or staff, or even convertible to academic purposes,” the Architectural Centre said in their appeal.

The two central issues in this case, according to the Environment Court, were the heritage value of the building, and the “practicalities, difficulties, and costs of refurbishment.”

The Court held that the building had “significant heritage value and should not be delisted.” The Court did not address the question of refurbishment, stating that whether refurbishment was practical would be “subject to close scrutiny” if there was a further application or appeal about the building’s heritage status.

Costley told Salientthat VUW is “still examining the court decision” and reviewing its options. Investigations remain ongoing as to “options for development of the site.”

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/gordon-wilson-flats-saved-from-the-wrecking-ball/feed/0PNG Election Part IIhttp://salient.org.nz/2017/08/png-election-part-ii/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/png-election-part-ii/#commentsSun, 13 Aug 2017 21:00:12 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48027The Papua New Guinea general election that took place between June 24 and July 8 has been characterised internationally as suffering from mismanagement and inconsistencies.

Transparency International PNG (TIPNG) has condemned the conduct of the election as “disheartening and completely unacceptable to the vast majority of our people who believe in good and fair actions, transparency and democratic processes.”

Peter O’Neill has retained his position as Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, winning the vote of his peers 60–46 at Parliament’s first sitting on August 2.

Parliament’s first sitting was initially delayed after two men claimed to be Member-elect for the Gumine Open electorate in Chimbu Province. Lucas Dekena and Nick Kuman both claimed they were declared winner by a Returning Officer, the second case of double declaration in the 2017 election.

The Chief Justice was prevented from swearing in a Member-elect until a resolution could be found.

The Commonwealth Observer Group, chaired by former New Zealand Governor-General Anand Satyanand, sent teams to 12 PNG provinces to monitor polling. Satyanand explained to RNZthat the teams were to observe independently but were “not to be responsible for the conduct of the election.”

In his report, Satyanand identified that “a key issue to this election has been the significant number of voters whose names were not on the common roll.”

Gamato admitted that thousands of citizens were disenfranchised and ineligible to vote, explaining to RNZ that the entirety of 2016 “was committed to doing work on the roll.”

“Unfortunately the funding for the roll updating was not done on a timely basis for us at the Electoral Commission to work on the roll.”

All three members of the Electoral Advisory Commission resigned in early July, saying the Electoral Commission refused to provide them with the basic information necessary to perform their “constitutional duties and roles.”

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/png-election-part-ii/feed/0Fire Don’t Walk With Mehttp://salient.org.nz/2017/08/fire-dont-walk-with-me/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/fire-dont-walk-with-me/#commentsSun, 06 Aug 2017 21:00:17 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47911MPs and industry representatives from Australia and New Zealand met at the Agricultural Ministers Forum on July 26 to discuss critical agricultural concerns, including the eradication of the red imported fire ant (RIFA) from Australia and New Zealand

The Australian Government committed $411 million over ten years to eradicate RIFA. The decision expanded the National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication Program in response to concerns raised by environmentalists and farmers over their potential effects on Australia’s lifestyle, economy, and environment.

Red imported fire ants (RIFA), native to South America, are one of the world’s most invasive ant species. Seven RIFA incursions have been recorded in Australia since 2001, with all but one successfully eradicated.

Queensland’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries labelled RIFA a “social menace,” citing the US experience where “people don’t go barefoot or sit or lie on the ground, or even stand for too long in one spot because they will be stung.”

RIFA attack en masse, inflicting an itching and burning sting that can last hours. Fatal allergic reactions have been reported, and secondary infections from stings can be serious.

Three RIFA colonies have been detected and destroyed in NZ since 2001. Unlike Australia, New Zealand currently has no targeted RIFA eradication policy, although preventative measures being undertaken under broader biosecurity practices. In 2006, the Government pledged $10 million to fight RIFA, as part of a $138 million annual biosecurity budget.

A Landcare Research risk assessment identified that RIFA have a high likelihood of being introduced to New Zealand through the transportation of shipping containers and untreated natural materials.

In March 2001 an Auckland Airport gardener found a RIFA nest, which was subsequently destroyed. No further signs of incursion were discovered. Three years later, in February 2004, 200 RIFA were found in bait traps at the Port of Napier.

In 2006, a nest which is thought to have been two to three years old was discovered in Whirinaki. The nest was destroyed, and surveillance and treatment of the area was carried out until 2009.

A report by The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, issued in 2001, identified the potential effects of RIFA introduction, citing the annual cost of living with RIFA at an estimated to be $318 million. 70% of that attributed to household impacts, such as repairs and treatment costs.

Voting closed on July 8, with 3332 candidates contesting 111 seats in the National Parliament, the body tasked with electing a new Prime Minister.

Wabag, capital of the Enga province, remained in lockdown for five days after a gunfight between rival supporters. Police confirmed four fatalities, with clashes part of an ongoing dispute over vote counting procedure in the electorate.

Tensions arose over returning officer Ben Bosawe’s decision to not count at least fourteen ballot boxes, despite the Electoral Commissioner’s instructions to include them in the vote. A peaceful protest was staged in Wabag on July 21 by supporters of various candidates, urging Bosawe to adhere to the Commissioner’s directive.

The Pacific Islands Forum, in an interim report, noted that it was “disappointing that a large number of Papua New Guinea citizens were disenfranchised of their constitutional rights to vote, particularly given the high levels of civic awareness and interest in participating.”

Prior to the election, a polling station at the University of Papua New Guinea received only around 1300 blank ballot papers despite a 4000 strong voting population. Students at the University of Technology in Lae set fire to ballot papers after only 1500 were provided for a voting population of approximately 5000.

The Pacific Islands Forum identified reports of an “alarming number of names” absent on the electoral roll. Cases were reported of residents, despite living in the electorate and having previously voted, arriving at polling stations to find their names missing on the roll.

On July 28, the Electoral Commissioner will present all returned writs to the head of state, identifying the new parliament. Incumbent PM Peter O’Neill, winner of the Ialibu-Pangia District, and his governing People’s National Congress (PNC) hold a majority of 16 in the 46 declared seats, as at July 25. The Alliance, a new coalition between the National Alliance, Pangu, and People’s Progress parties and numerous independents and minority parties, present the biggest opposition to the incumbents.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/papua-new-guinea-election-woes/feed/0NM Cherry Blossom detained for transporting stolen goodshttp://salient.org.nz/2017/07/nm-cherry-blossom-detained-for-transporting-stolen-goods/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/nm-cherry-blossom-detained-for-transporting-stolen-goods/#commentsSun, 23 Jul 2017 21:00:18 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47641The NM Cherry Blossomhas been detained in Port Elizabeth since May 1, subject to a South African High Court case. It has a cargo of illegally mined phosphate rock from Western Sahara, destined for Tauranga and valued at approximately $7 million.

The United Nations recognises Western Sahara as non self-governing territory. Morocco controls 80% of the region through military presence, and to date all attempts to resolve the issue of sovereignty have been unsuccessful.

The Polisario Front, a Western Sahara liberation movement, had claimed that the OCP Group, a Moroccan state-owned company, were mining without express consent. The UN, in a 2017 Security Council report, expressed its concerns over Morocco’s failure to adopt “necessary measures to consult the people of Western Sahara on the exploitation of their natural resources.”

The cargo had been detained after an application by Sahrawi authorities to the South African Court. An interim detainment order was confirmed in the High Court on June 15, where it was noted that the Sahrawi government maintained ownership until proven otherwise.

The matter was set to progress to trial over ownership of the shipment, however the OCP dropped its defence of the case on July 13.

The detained phosphate rock, a valuable commodity in the production process of agricultural grade phosphates, was intended for New Zealand fertiliser manufacturer and distributer, Ballance Agri-Nutrients. Ballance, and Ravensdown, another farming co-operative, imported 369,000 metric tonnes of phosphate rock in 2016, making New Zealand the second biggest importer from the occupied region.

Salientreached out to Ballance and Ravensdown for comment, but both failed to respond. Mark Wynne, Ballance’s chief executive, stated in an interview with RNZ,“our little phosphate shipment is just a very small part of this great big jigsaw.”

Mike Barton, from Western Sahara Campaign NZ, told Salientthat the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has estimated that “about 90% of phosphate [imported into New Zealand] comes from Bou Craa,” an area occupied by Morocco.

OCP’s claim to be mining on behalf of the Sahrawi people has been contested by the Sahrawi government. Kamal Fadel, Sahrawi representative for Australia and New Zealand, released a statement suggesting Bou Craa beneficiaries “are not the people of the territory, but, more likely, Moroccan settlers.”